NEOM; Saudi Arabia’s Mega City Project, Objectives

The project of building a mega city, dubbed NEOM, the 26,500 square kilometer city is planned to be built in northwest of the country, extending to Egypt and Jordan. The city will lie on the coasts of the Red Sea and will be accessible from Europe, Asia, and Africa within less than 8 hours.

The project comes as part of the Vision 2030, a document providing a roadmap to help the Arab monarchy cut reliance on the oil revenues, which was unveiled by son of the King Salman in late April 2016.

The project aims to convert Saudi Arabia into a top economic power in the region by reducing the dependence on oil incomes.

According to Bin Salman, the NEOM project will help economic growth and diversity, domestic industry development, new jobs opportunities, and giving “a picture of the future human civilization.”

It is clear enough that the project is aimed at improvement of industrial production economic conditions as the kingdom’s various economic sectors have critically been bearing the brunt of sagging oil prices over the past three years.

The General objectives of the plan can be outlined as follows:

– Cutting dependence on oil revenues

– Attracting foreign investment

– Weathering the hard economic conditions,

– Overshadowing the ongoing war in the neighboring Yemen

– And burnishing the Saudi Arabian image and presenting it to the world as a modern and civilized, not traditional, country.

The Saudi war against the neighboring Yemen has cost it so much so far, They even had to sell part of Aramco During the past three years of war, they spend a total amount of $725 billion. Besides all this, Saudi Arabia also supports a set of terrorist groups in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan in a bid to cultivate influence for running its regional policy.

Saudi Arabia is the third country with the world’s largest military budget. Surprisingly Saudi Arabia spends only 2 percent of its military budget at home. The Vision 2030 aims at increasing this figure to 50 percent. But raising the national budget will take cutting the military spending, a necessity Riyadh is yet to address.

Coming to the Social part, the social ground is crucial. Saudi society is highly conservative and traditional, while the project eyes fast change and radical modernization of the nation, something that will certainly draw opposition of a large part of the society as well as the hardline Wahabbi clerics.

Despite the economic, political, social problems and limitations, it yet remains to see how far this project remains successful!